


This Is a Low

by GarishGarchomp



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Gen, Insecurity, Self-Esteem Issues, bede is a lil shit and i love him for it, dude needs to lay off himself tbh, mopheaded motherfucker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:35:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27008197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GarishGarchomp/pseuds/GarishGarchomp
Summary: Never too high, never too low, Rose told him.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21
Collections: Nuzlocke Forums Content, The Storylocke Compendium





	This Is a Low

Faith is the future. It’s potential. It’s your road forward.

And then someone slaps a label on you, and labels are a roundabout where you’re stuck in the right lane in rush hour.

It isn’t enough for your family to fall apart faster than a Corviknight ambulance takes to the skies. It’s not enough to waste away in an orphanage, sucking cobwebs and eating whatever scraps they can dig up for you. Not enough to literally fight to survive in there, even if it means you don’t get that half a PB&J for dinner that you needed to get to sleep before midnight. And it sure as hell isn’t enough to be called Bede, which is only marginally preferable to the Wickersham Palace-level _Belvedere_ that even shows up in the dictionary with a posh fucking accent. 

Then again, with all the sex toy jokes I’ve dealt with over the years, maybe I should consider changing back. There’s only so many times you can reply about shoving a boot up their ass instead.

No, it’s never enough for people. They need to slap a tag on you five seconds after they meet you, and there’s your whole life laid out, skip the faith. The only way you can get out of it is through failure. You could be a hooligan from the day you’re born even if you live in a fucking castle, but you’re only a golden boy until some chav incinerates half your team like a bloody Call to Arms trailer. 

So what am I? Hah. I imagine “problem child” is right near the top of your list.

In fact, I’ve been called a little posh brat by one tabloid already, with more sending their takedowns to press as I speak. Doesn’t matter that calling me a mop-head does a disservice to mops. Doesn’t matter that I’m a bloody orphan with a net worth of negative fuck-all. They see Rose, they see me, and their mind’s made up. All they wonder is why he’d back such a little shit, why throw _me_ his scraps. And I don’t just mean my hatenna.

He’s never answered. He’s never had to. He has faith in me, he gave me a starter and a chance in hell, so I can’t say I care too awfully much myself. For once, a man knows the name Bede and doesn’t curl his lips in disgust.

“Never too high, never too low,” he kept telling me. That’s what the little psychic was for, too. Funny from a man stooping from such great heights to pluck me from the depths. But you tell me you wouldn’t bite anyone’s hand off for a damn endorsement when nobody’s endorsed you in your entire life. He wants me to grab some stars or what have you, I’ll damn well take some. He tells me to jump, I’ll bring out a pole vault. That’s what faith can do.

All I've been is branded, labeled. All I’ve been is a problem child. Home to home. Fight to fight. Day to day. 

They want a problem child? I’ll be their problem child. I’ll be a problem all the way to Wyndon fucking Stadium.

Today, I'm called into Rose’s Wyndon office, overlooking the city he put so much into. He asks about the hatenna he gave me a couple years ago, making sure she's as ready for the road ahead as I was. He supplies me with potions and pokeballs, everything I’ll need and then some.

And then he asks if I can do a little bit more for him.

He smiles that artificially white grin of his, leans back in his chair, and takes a moment of pause to leave me up in the air. “Should you come across any wishing stars on your challenge, just send them right to me. That would be absolutely lovely of you.”

“How many do you need?” I press.

His smile grows a little wider.

“My lad, if you cleaned out the region of them, I would not complain in the slightest.”

Maybe I’ll do just that.

**++++++++++**

Pushovers, everyone. 

Here’s some advice from your to-be champion for next year’s League participants: 

  1. Catch the first blipbug you see.
  2. Make sure it’s a dottler by the time you receive your golf claps at the opening ceremony (unless you’re from Spikemuth).



Congratulations, you’ve defeated Milo, and knocked out a half-dozen trainers along the way. You don’t even need to keep the bugger afterwards. I didn’t.

Don’t worry about stage fright either. Nobody bloody cares about you this early. Turffield Stadium has all the atmosphere of my first children’s home.

It burned down six years ago.

**++++++++++**

I have seafood for the first time in my life. 

It’s fitting after stomping Nessa, for one. They don’t serve turtles at this fine establishment, but they might soon. More than that, Chairman Rose himself frequents this establishment, in the absolute worst “disguise” since the concept was invented. I suspect he secretly adores the stares, the squints, the hushed tones.

Not that he doesn’t already have enough of those daily to last a century, but it’s a different story when he’s donning glorified boxers.

I’m just leaving a right big tip when the ambience turns from animated conversations to a silicobra’s birthday party. All hisses and whispers and stares ranging from gawks to leers.

We cross paths just as a hostess grabs a pair of menus for him and Oleana. He grins down at me, though he keeps on his shades.

“Ah, hello there,” he greets with a half-wave. “Quite the feast, is it not?”

“Yes, quite,” I reply. “A proper one after such a victory at the gym, too.”

His sunglasses aren’t tinted enough to keep me from watching the gears whir behind his eyes. For an eternity.

I don’t hear his reply before his assistant whisks him away.

**++++++++++**

My hatenna bloody hates Kabu.

The sheer austerity of his gym challenge, the way it culls dreams like a spring harvest, it drives people mad. When something drives people mad, it drives my poor hatenna mad.

And when she’s mad, you know that I’m in as foul a mood as she can handle. Not that she needs the empathy.

More than anything, she’s needed a break from me. Forget laugh lines, any more scowling and I’ll look like Opal by the time I’m lifting the cup in Wyndon. All it took was a second or two, and that one and only support system I’ve been able to lean on toppled right on top of me. 

I see Rose’s look every time I look at my starter, too. It’s not her fault, of course. He gave her to me, but it’s not as though she had much attachment to him. Hell, I think she was glad to get away from his constant smugness, not that she knew what she was getting into with me. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

And isn’t there a lot of fire to deal with now.

That wasn’t a problem before, mind. Kabu’s will-o-wisps might cripple the brutes, but my psychics dispatch most of his team with haste.

Then comes the ace.

Then comes deciding which of my lambs I’d like to slaughter today.

My gothita takes the lead. She has all the constitution of a Hulbury drunkard, but she still manages to pull the earth apart and splinter the oversized condom wrapper.

It’s not enough. My starter finishes the job, but it’s still a two-pokemon job by necessity.

I bury her just outside of town, under a willow.

My hatenna bloody hates Kabu. I bloody hate him too.

**++++++++++**

I spend what little money I’ve not put into savings on goggles.

Bloody goggles.

Gothita has some friends now. That psychotic masked kid took pleasure in watching my indeedee die, I just know it. Didn’t even stun the audience, either. They’ve seen this riot act before. It’s practically factored into the ticket price. I’d rather fight in front of Spikemuth’s Iron Island jacket wearing chavs than Stow’s legitimately bloodlusting throngs.

One wasn’t enough. Not to appease them, not to appease him. Of all the aces, this gengar is maybe the most feared. I’ll surely have night terrors after watching it devour my gardevoir.

That’s half the reason I’m trawling the only desert in Galar, a scar of shingle and scrubs, to have a team again.

The other half? Hattrem should pick up the presence of any stars around these barren parts, but it’s my new mawile and weavile who do the digging. 

It’s… an imperfect system.

After the first one, I’m led back and forth to a string of Wishing _Pieces_ , ugly little shards and clumps worth less than nothing. After the first few, my two new team members glare at me when we arrive at a new spot, expecting me to get on my hands and knees and join them in inhaling dirt. Not that it helps. It never fucking helps.

I just want every fucking star there is. I want to smash every fucking den in the Wild Area and break off every single shard from Eternatus himself and shove it all in Rose’s face so he’ll never forget my fucking face again.

This is what I get for being content. This is what I get for finally thinking someone has faith in a problem child like me. I get a mouthful of pebbles. Sand under my goggles. A fistful of dirt. Two new pokemon thinking I’m a neurotic mess. And it’s all in the most barren fucking part of the region, gods damn it all to hell.

I pound my first into the dirt, freezing everyone. The breeze lifts, if only for a moment.

I glance over at my Hattrem. She’s shaking, giving me an icy glare that seems to match my own, almost.

The last thing I see is her rearing back with a ponytail.

**++++++++++**

Ballonlea’s gym is intimate, the kind of venue where the fans are on top of the action and the video screens don’t show your face to the next town over. It’s just low enough in the challenge that the regional media don’t want to venture into this surrealist nightmare of a town for footage, either.

It means “only” a few thousand properly see my black eye.

The fight is a fever dream, too. An onslaught of trick questions, cheap tactics, and the kind of cheek that can only come from someone who missed their exit to the afterlife more than a few kilometres ago. Her mawile bunkers down like she’s in a war zone, which mine takes as a personal affront. The togekiss damn near paralyzes half my team through its bright, hellish gales. Don’t start me on her ace and how it nearly drowned my poor rapidash. She still has cream in her mane.

After the match, the goblin shambles over donning a smirk, different to what she’d worn during the match. She regards me the whole way over, up and down rather than trying to bore into my head with another inane question to send her crowd into titters like they’re watching a bloody improv show.

She waits until she has me in a handshake, badge between us, before she speaks. “You won’t make it far with that attitude, nor that leer of yours. Loosen up, dear. It’s only a game.”

“Predicting moves in battle isn’t the same as predicting the future, innit?” I scoff, prying my hand away from her cold, scaly, bony claws. “Time and place for that.”

Her expression hardly changes. I’m not so sure that it can. “I was you, half a century ago, right down to that sick baby wooloo on your head.”

Well that is just uncalled for.

She cuts me off before I can retort. “I lost to a bloke named Mustard by being too tight, too straight-forward. There’s more than one way to build momentum for yourself.” The name’s thrown out carelessly, but with too much weight to properly unpack.

With a couple taps of her cane on my grungy sneaker, she turns to leave. But she gives me one last smirk.

“Come back once you’re done with all this mess. We have much to discuss.”

I don’t get what she means then. I don’t until I get back to Hammerlocke and see the tabloid covers, the magazine headlines, even hearing a radio segment. I pick one up from a street stand, under the watchful eye of a living cloud of cigarette smoke. _THORN IN HIS SIDE!_ it proclaims in gaudy yellow boldface.

I worked my tail off to collect what I could. I gave him enough Wishing Stars to Dynamax Oleana herself, much less that rubbish monster of hers. I’ve watched teammates die in front of me.

And he dropped me.

If he ever quite knew he had me in the first place.

**++++++++++**

It’s all a slog by now.

I can’t even enjoy the sights. The ruins of Rt. 8, the vaunted Steamdrift Bridge over the River Bard, the stone plazas of Circhester, none of it looks all that scenic to me.

The gym battle is little consolation as well. I feel like I torture my poor mawile with everything she goes through. Pelted by hail, coated in feathers, frostbitten, drenched, and she was only in for half the fight. I’ve heard enough horror stories about that infernal darmanitan to know that she needs to be as far away from it as possible. Doesn’t even have the courtesy to lock itself into one move like most of them.

By the time her Lapras has sung her last tune, by the time I’ve palmed the badge and shaken hands with Melony amidst the typical catcalls, I just want out of this stuffy old city. It’s incredible how pretentious and backwards they are here, given what’s staring at them from across the bay.

Then again, maybe that’s _exactly_ why they’re like this.

Some little girl who doesn’t know better asks for an autograph as I leave the stadium. It’s only through the brightest blue eyes in Galar that she convinces me to put pen to paper. 

She turns around, runs back to her dad, and he takes it from her with a pat on her head. 

I give him a glare before walking straight into the wild. 

The biting cold of Circhester Bay actually hits me. It bloody stings, of course. The sadists at the League would surely delight in subjecting kids to this constantly swirling gale where seriously dangerous pokemon dwell, if not for what lies on the other side of these waters. But the cold helps rouse me from this daze I’ve been in, and the howling winds make me feel the slightest bit less alone.

Well, I’m not totally alone. Hatterene floats along beside me, watching me stew, fidgeting beneath all that hair.

I haven’t said a word this whole time. 

That moment in Hulbury replays every hour for me, that single little slip of his mind that I saw. Surely not close to the only one. 

Surely it’s not a slip at all. 

That’s what I come back to. He gave me a pokemon. He gave me some sage old advice. He gave me a signature on a piece of paper. 

He gave me faith, and he moved right along.

The road opens up as the bay nears, and the winds all turn to slap me across the face. Bit of a familiar feeling, that one.

Why even endorse someone like me? Why even send me all around the region? Why the trust in me to go far in the League, to collect all these Stars, to stake his name to me, only to throw me in the fucking bin halfway through? 

Maybe that’s just it, though. Maybe it all was because I’m so easy to toss aside. Because I’ve been dropped enough times it’s shocking I haven’t cracked. And if anyone thinks I’m going to now, they’re in for a real fucking—

Everything is black. 

Then blue. 

Then pink.

My head throbs, like I’m growing a horn to make my rapidash jealous. That’s all I can think about, until it subsides.

I glance around, collecting my bearings. Hatterene looms over me, tuts, looks out at the bay like she doesn’t know a thing.

In the back of my mind, six words echo on repeat.

Never too high, never too low.

I take a deep breath, clench my fists, and keep walking.

**++++++++++**

I didn’t remember Spikemuth being quite this dreary.

Everyone shits on the town for being an awful place to live. Galar’s armpit, they call it. If you had asked me years ago which city was worse though, I’d have told you Wyndon every time, from what I saw in and around my homes growing up. That’s not even getting into the knuckle-draggers I dealt with.

I haven’t been out and about Wyndon proper much, but even with Rose’s influence, it’s a hell of a lot brighter than my hometown’s become.

Never too high, never too low, Rose told me.

The beachfront is an unholy hybrid of sand and landfill, set about a dozen metres out from a smoothed-out stone bank with all the personality of a dentist’s office. Every apartment across the road is a sickly off-white, and even that’s a better facade than the rubble that lies inland. Only a kitschy old pier in the south provides any kind of color or noise beyond bickering couples. Predictably, it’s hardly seeing any activity. 

It’s a down and out town, and love him or hate him, at least Piers represents the city properly… when he chooses to. Bloody vampire. 

He didn’t put up much of a fight in his “gym” battle. Neither of us expected him to. It was more like a procession than anything, somber beyond how it was backed by a couple hooligans armed with patched-up guitars and three chords played ad nauseam. 

Neither of us batted an eye at the other. He gave me the badge with some boilerplate congratulations. He wanted to leave as much as I did.

Never too high, never too low, Rose told me.

I give him a nod as I collect my winnings and get on my way. Piers returns it. He knows Spikemuth blood when he sees it. Even in a mutt like me.

Hatterene is tucked away, needing rest after out-control-freaking his Malamar. Even with that, I take a moment to duck into an alley, running a hand through my hair, taking the lid off so I don’t boil over. 

One gym left. One gym, and then I march right up to Wyndon. March right up to Wyndon, and then I blow out everyone in my path, trainers and leaders alike. 

Blow out everyone, and watch Rose hand a trophy to someone he doesn’t think exists.

Never too high, never too low, he told me.

Fuck him, I’ll go as high as I want to. Higher than he wants me to. All those stars can get shoved right up his arse, and I’ll be the first in line to help.

My belt rattles. All my team members feel that acrid aura of mine. They all react differently, but they all react nonetheless. Arceus bless my weavile for almost encouraging it, though. He’s a little shit, but for a little shit surrounded by fairies, he’s acquitted himself admirably.

I take a deep breath. And another. And another. Walk out of the alley, if not just to get away from the dumpster stench that was starting to seep into my jacket.

One gym left. Just harden up now, strap on those damn goggles, demolish Raihan, and move on from there. Just keep my wits about me and keep on moving forward. I still have an endorsement thanks to that geezer in Ballonlea, and I still have a right good shot at becoming the Champion.

Just keep a cool head like you always do, Bede.

Never too high, never too low. 

I wander the draining, deprived streets of bloody Spikemuth with seven badges in tow and not a shred of joy about it. 

There’s nobody in my corner, a hundred people in the other one, and thousands in the audience who’ve given up on me at best, never cared for me at worst. Who’ve never seen me as more than a waste of blood and bones, much less an endorsement.

I’d say that’s pretty fucking low.

**++++++++++**

The sky is falling in Hammerlocke, and for once it’s not Raihan’s fault.

It’s mine.

My flip phone tells me it’s noon, but one glance upwards says it’s approaching midnight in the heart of winter. Storm clouds swirl over Hammerlocke Stadium as the city is bathed in a baleful shade of red. People on the streets look agitated enough, but their pokemon are having an absolute mare. 

Such as the drednaw looming over me and the gym leader himself.

He doesn’t know what’s going on. Shocker, that one. All he told me was that Rose was “dodgy as balls lately” and kept rambling about energy problems, alternative energy, the like.

Didn’t take much for me to put two and two together.

Didn’t take much to realize I was less than a no-name to him. I was a pawn, simple as that.

Raihan pulled me into this fight without a second thought. Bolted out of his towering stadium, locked eyes with me, actually _recognized_ me… 

I was in before he said a single word.

This isn’t the first raging pokemon we’ve fought tonight, either. A corvisquire and noivern were duking it out in the stadium earlier. Just as we barged through the tunnel and onto the pitch, the bird got hurled into the stands and took out an entire section. That’s about what our teams look like at this point too.

Raihan swapped his gigalith for his flygon ace after the former took a right beating, and only spent a couple seconds doting on the overgrown bug before they both got serious in the face of this latest titan. My weavile is exhausted as hell, but any time I even think about recalling him, he gives me a death glare and a bollocking under his breath. I’ve instead given him support through reuniclus, a bulky partner to help both of them hang in there.

If it wasn’t for the camera whore next to me, I don’t think I’d be holding my ground either. More holding in puke, really.

I take another look around. This drednaw’s steps have made the road a nightmarish slalom to traverse, and its tail has taken out buildings on both sides. Children are wailing, absolutely inconsolable. Their parents all look like they’re watching their lives replay before them.

I felt the aura of each wishing star as I acquired them, the pure energy in each shard. I saw that faint red glow in my palm and didn’t heed its ominous bent at any point. I handed all but one of them to that prick in his glass ivory tower.

Roads destroyed. Businesses ruined. Trauma induced. Lives lost.

All fueled by the problem child. 

My reuniclus narrowly avoids being driven into the core of the earth by a stomp. I feel about that much weight bearing down on me as well. For obliging a man in beginning the end of the world, for causing this entire nightmare, I only wish I could sink into the earth. 

Raihan nudges me. I hadn’t noticed him sidle over, so the contact makes me jump halfway out of my shoes.

I look up at him, and he’s peering out at the battle. At flygon zipping around one side, while my weavile flanks the other. 

“I dunno what your deal with Rose was, I dunno what it is at the moment… but we’re here now, right?” he asks, only glancing at me. He shouts some code to his ace. I can’t find the voice to follow suit. 

When I don’t reply, he gives me another elbow. “He’ll have to blow up the whole bloody city if he’s gonna take us out, innit?” Only now does that smug grin come back, just for a moment. “Always knew I should have gone and evicted the bloke.”

I laugh. Short, caustic as hell, but a laugh. “Shocked he didn’t evict you. He’s quite good at shoving people off.”

The battle slows down, but that only yields desperation. Flygon can hardly tear at the earth’s seams with any more quakes. Weavile is reduced to hit-and-run tactics, with breathers in between. Reuniclus keeps his distance, because he damn well isn’t moving well. And the drednaw just thrashes about, taking every hit as a personal offense. 

“Let’s end this and get him to shove off for once then,” Raihan replies. I can’t argue with that.

Stopping the apocalypse won’t wash the blood off my hands, but it sure as hell stops the bleeding at least.

He flashes me that stupid smile before we go back to the battle. He barks out more orders, even one for my weavile. I send another prayer to Arceus for forgiveness.

That’s when I hear the squelch.

**++++++++++**

It ended without a death, at least. 

For how much that girl in the beret outclassed me, it’s a shocker that I left Wyndon Stadium with all five registered pokeballs still clipped to my belt. 

Mind you, I still took a third of her team down even with her annoyingly constant switching. I could feel my weavile itching to help too, to at least make it half, but that was never going to happen. As far as I can tell, he’s never fighting competitively for me again.

The Ballonlea Gym isn’t known for its dark-types, after all.

The old hag currently in charge knew I’d lose somewhere, but even she admits that she didn’t know if I’d get to Wyndon. Some things never change, I suppose. Still, she took one look at me back then, another at my team, and knew she had her succession plan in mind. Now every bloody day she bitches to me, telling me that I’m holding up her retirement to Orre. 

She’ll wait as long as she needs to. 

Through all the paperwork, the teambuilding, the community efforts, the background check that (shockingly) took longer than anticipated, there’s one decision I haven’t yet made.

I walk through Ballonlea from the stadium, stopping now and then when residents ask for a picture, an autograph, or for me to fuck myself. It’s an odd little town, but I have to admit the charms are quite plain to see. I only hope that I don’t fall prey to whatever spores these mushrooms must produce to turn half this town absolutely mental. 

Will make for an interesting atmosphere at my gym next year, though.

That in and of itself is hard to believe, “my gym.” It would be quite the rags to riches story if it didn’t happen how it did. Most of those tales don’t involve receiving handouts, directly benefiting from corruption, and legitimate apocalypse threats. It just about puts Rose’s words to shame, doesn’t it?

I work my way into the Tangle for the first time since I had to refill my team after Allister. The glow of the mushrooms does more to light my path than the sun itself, such is the density of these winding woods. I make a note to myself to visit once a week or so, to see if I can’t map the place out mentally. Seems like the proper thing to do, given that this is to be more or less my domain as well. It’s almost as if the pokemon living here sense that as well, the way they regard me as I pass. Maybe that “pink” the geezer prattles on about really is a thing.

After an hour in these parts, I come to a halt in a modest clearing. Still bloody dark, save for the light of a few emerald mushrooms, but there’s room to think here.

I stare at my orbeetle’s pokeball for a second. I don’t know if he was the same dottler I released all that time ago. Likely not. But he’s as grumpy and big-headed as I am all the same.

I palm weavile’s pokeball. He loves the darkness here, and the batshit nature of the town somehow plays into his nature perfectly. 

I glance at my ace’s pokeball, then let her out. Hatterene almost seems to stretch for a moment before eyeing me down, as she always does first thing. 

Rose gave her to me two years ago today. I don’t know if he always planned to return, but he did, with a certificate in hand. And me in the palm of his other.

Just the thought of that makes me clench my fist, makes me expel all the air in my lungs, makes hatterene shift and narrow her eyes at me.

My head throbs again. I glare up at her, this self-appointed sentry of my own mind.

Never too high, never too low, Rose said.

Never too high, never too low, she says.

I squeeze her pokeball as we eye each other. Grit my teeth. Swallow back the bile.

I press the release button and walk away.


End file.
